CRN India June 2018 (Vol.1, No.3)

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Vol 1. No. 3. June, 2018 Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka

CHANNELS’ PREPAREDNESS FOR THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION

Sr Vice President - BPD Neil Viegas

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Editor Srikanth RP* Assistant Editor Nivedan Prakash Delhi Mohd Ujaley, Sandhya Michu Mumbai Abhishek Raval, Mohit Rathod Bengaluru Rachana Jha DESIGN National Design Editor Bivash Barua Asst. Art Director Pravin Temble

Nivedan Prakash nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com

Chief Designer Prasad Tate Senior Graphic Designer Rekha Bisht DIGITALTEAM Head of Internet Viraj Mehta Web Developer Dhaval Das Layout Vinayak Mestry Photo Editor Sandeep Patil MARKETING National Head Harit Mohanty Regional Heads Ravi Nair - West Prabhas Jha - North Durga Prasad - South Debnarayan Dutta - East Marketing Team Shankar Adaviyar Ajanta Sengupta Navneet Negi Aparna Tawde Circulation Mohan Varadkar Scheduling Santosh Lokare PRODUCTION General Manager B R Tipnis

oday, organisations are setting the pace for digital transformation and driving innovation in their industries. As more and more enterprises are implementing / leveraging new digital technologies like AI, IoT, and Blockchain to enhance business performance, it brings a plethora of opportunities for the channel partners who are gearing themselves to help their customers in this digital transformation journey.

In the current digital age, the role of partners has expanded considerably. They are joining forces with vendors and their customers to coinnovate and build upon the emerging technologies. We could increasingly see a synergistic collaboration between vendors and partners, which is resulting in new offerings and solutions for the digital era that could enhance customer success.

For instance, a Mumbaibased solution provider, Intelegain Technologies, has created an AI-based stock trading chatbot, Professr, which assists stock market enthusiasts and investors with real-time stock price information of diverse companies.

In fact, not only the traditional channel but also the

new age partners have today adopted a digital-first approach, wherein they have been investing heavily on digital channels to reach to their potential customers.

Most of the partners have already integrated the latest technologies in their offerings to gain competitive advantage and incremental market share.

Besides, they are hiring resources with the latest technology skill-sets to build on their assets. Moreover, they are helping their customers in building a scalable architecture to roll-out more robust digital applications in future.

Another example here is that of Ahmedabad-based solution provider, Streebo, which is building a cognitive and adaptive omni-channel digital experience platform and adding / integrating the power of AI to its apps. Ditto for Bengalurubased Valuepoint Systems that has brought in the AI piece for automating L1 and L2 support for one of its client.

Looking at these changing market dynamics, it is imperative for the channel partners to have a strong presales consulting and post sales deployment and support team in place to ensure the success of their customers’ digital transformation journey.

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Content

7 | Cover Story

16 | Channel Chief

28 | CXO Speak

Reinventing for the digital era

‘We help customers become data driven’

‘Channel has been at the core of our strategy’

The digital wave is encouraging channel partners to build digital skills rapidly and prepare for the future

Kaushal Veluri, Director, Channels, Alliances & Sales, NetApp India Marketing & Services

Shrinivas Chebbi, President, Buildings Business, Schneider Electric

Thought Leader

Channel Chief

News Analysis

13 | Digital Transformation: Making banking invisible Mohit Kapoor, Head- DBS, Asia Hub 2

24 | Post financial restructuring, Avaya is operating at its full potential Fadi Moubarak, Vice President – Channel, Avaya

36 | Milestone Systems is prepared for the next phase of IP Video Surveillance Amit Sarkar, Country Manager, Milestone Systems.

Partner Corner

30 | ‘Data breaches, cyber threats in BFSI, healthcare industry represent a huge opportunity for BlackBerry Richard Mcleod, Global Vice President – Enterprise Software Channels, BlackBerry

38 | DVEC to pave way for digital transformation NetApp has unveiled a new Data Visionary Engineering Centre (DVEC) in Bengaluruto empower Asia Pacific customers and partners to transform the world with data

14 | ‘We have built capabilities to drive digital transformation from computers to rockets in technology’ RS Shanbhag, CMD, Value Point Group

CIO Corner 18 | How Mahindra & Mahindra is reinventing itself for the digital era V S Parthasarathy, Group CIO & CFO, Mahindra & Mahindra 26 | Technology has the power to transform healthcare in India Alpana J Doshi, Group Chief Information Officer, Royal Philips

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CXO Speak 22 | ‘We have always believed in core channel policy’ S Ganesh, Head – Small & Medium Business, Lenovo India 32 | Aruba’s vision: A network that is automated and end-to-end Alain Carpentier, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Aruba

Channel Association 39 | Business collaboration proving to be a way forward for IT channel FAIITA, PCAIT organised a day-long business meet for exploring business collaborations for its IT members

Event 34 | ‘Every year we have a target of going to newer cities’ Marthesh Nagendra E S, Country Manager – India & SAARC, NetGear

40 | Celebrating 40 years of IBM memories K R Naik, Executive Chairman, Smartlink Holdings

Cover Story

REINVENTING FOR THE DIGITAL ERA

The digital wave is encouraging channel partners to build digital skills rapidly and prepare for the future â–

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ndia is in the midst of a huge digital revolution. This can not only be seen in terms of common people using digital platforms to access basic services, but also in terms of business models of companies changing completely. A recent Boston Consulting Group report, for example, highlights the intent of Indian companies who are using their digital capabilities to accelerate faster than their

Srikanth R P & Sandhya Michu

competitors. The Boston Consulting Group report says that a majority of Indian global challengers—71 per cent compared to the average of 100 global challengers with 59 per cent—is leveraging digital capabilities to succeed, in other words, they are either digital natives or significant digital adopters. The report highlights the example of Mahindra & Mahindra, which is using digital models to

transform itself.

The company is preparing itself for a huge digital leap and relooking at how digital technologies can be used to create massive competitive advantage.

For example, the Mahindra Group has quickly learnt from startups and digital leaders like Uber and Ola. The group has launched SmartShift, an online aggregator platform that connects cargo owners and transporters, which has

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Cover Story

"TODAY,EVERY COMPANY IS TRYING A DIGITAL-FIRST APPROACH,AND WE ARE TRYING TO HELP OUR CUSTOMERS IN THEIR DIGITALJOURNEY BY ENSURING THATTHEIR IT INFRASTRUCTURE IS READY FOR A DIGITAL LEAP."

"TODAY,WE DON'TBUY TECHNOLOGIES IN PIECES,WE HAVE ADETAILED ROADMAP PLANNED FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION.ANOTHER THING I HAVE OBSERVED THATIFYOU'RE NOTTALKING 'DIGITAL',NOBODYWILL ENTERTAIN YOU."

"WE HAVE CREATED OUR OWN CLOUD ORCHESTRATION TOOL THATENABLES US TO MANAGE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE OPTIMALLY.KNOWN AS THE CLOUDMAP,THIS HELPS YOU EFFECTIVELYMANAGE THE APPLICATIONS RUNNING ON CLOUD."

Tarun Seth,

Jayantha Prabhu,

Devendra Deshmukh,

Managing Director, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic

become extremely popular among cargo owners due to its transparent and competitive pricing. In a first, the group has also launched an agricultural rental equipment service.

Using an app, farmers can take on rent tractors and equipments on a pay-peruse basis. Orders can be booked using an app, which are then passed on to the nearest franchisee using location based mapping.

Another case in point is HDFC Bank, which is using algorithms extensively to automate every process where technology can improve efficiency with minimal human intervention. One of the best examples of this approach can be seen in the personal loan segment. The bank uses an algorithm that allows it to process loans in just 10 seconds.

This is an era of instant consumption, and banks like ICICI Bank are capitalising on this trend by launching a slew of products. Backed

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CIO, Essar Group

CEO and Founder, E-Zest Solutions

by powerful analytics, the bank has created several instant products instant credit card, instant PPF facility, instant digital credit. There are several such examples, where leaders are taking a cue from startups and creating new revenue paths.

experience. The way we evaluate technology has also changed in today’s world – every CIO is now connected on social media, where they discuss about channels. For technology finalisation, there’s no requirement of meeting with OEMs, because everybody can access content on the internet. Moreover, proof of concept is a must in present times – it’s not about technology, the integration is important. Additionally, support and OEM backing is equally crucial. Today, we don’t buy technologies in pieces, we have a detailed roadmap planned for digital transformation. Another thing I have observed that if you’re not talking ‘digital’, nobody will entertain you.”

While traditionally, the focus was on selling hardware, the demand for customised solutions and value added digital services, is making channel players reinvent themselves for the digital era.

The impact on the channel Digital technologies have completely changed the way customers are consuming services.

This is best summed up by Jayantha Prabhu, CIO, Essar Group, as he explains how the role of the CIO has changed. He says, “The major disruption is happening in the role of the CIO. Earlier a CIO’s KPIs were measured in terms of data centre uptime, connectivity uptime, cost savings etc. Whereas, today CIOs are measured on four major KPIs – improving revenue, improving efficiency within processes, risk management and customer

This is also reflected in the way some of the biggest players in the industry are empowering their regional partners.

A case in point is Ingram Micro. The company is building a whole business model on providing services that would enable its retailers to create a digital presence. Right from helping them to set up stores in multiple market places, managing their product portfolios, publishing their inventories, managing their shopping cart, warehousing and inventories, and last mile supply chain, Ingram is providing a complete end-toend services for online business.

Similarly, Mumbai-based Orient Technologies is also seeing a rapid growth in its business specifically with respect to digital transformation. Says Ajay Sawant, Managing Director, Orient Technologies, “We are looking to close 20-30 cases where we will be helping our customers automate the process and taking on-premise applications to cloud in this financial year. For us, cloud and mobility are the two main offerings of our portfolio.”

Partners like e-Zest have built their own IP for accelerating their customer’s digital journey. Devendra Deshmukh, CEO and Founder, e-Zest Solutions, says, “We have created our own cloud orchestration tool that enables us to manage cloud infrastructure optimally.

Known as the CloudMAP, this helps you effectively manage the applications running on cloud. With CloudMAP, you can configure complex systems which can be configured and deployed as per requirement with ease. We also came up with a Tabit framework that develops rich and easy-to-manage mobile apps in the shortest possible time. Besides this, the Centre for Excellence (CFE) groups that we have built PoCs that helps in understanding the issues of implementing the project saving crucial time on client projects.

Besides, we have acquired the SmarterMe sales productivity tool. This tool has brought AI expertise and sales domain knowledge on board.”

Digital skills shortage Digital skills shortage is being felt across the industry, which is creating a massive opportunity for channel

CASE STUDY: HOW VELOCIS SYSTEMS IS MAKING ENTERPRISES GST COMPLIANT

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he compelling reason for Delhi based Velocis Systems to start designing the digital framework for the businesses when the GST regime came into being, which demanded every business to file their return on every 10th and 24th of a month.

Since the time Velocis has been appointed as GSTN accredited GST (Goods and Services Tax) Suvidha Providers (GSP) and application service providers (ASP), it has created Go4GST Filing Services Platform for taxpayers including data processing requirements, invoice generation, invoice uploading, return filing, accounts maintenance, consultancy, etc on GSTN Portal.

The GST business of Velocis acts as an integration network between the taxpayers and the GST Network. Enabling and empowering the two different sets of interactions, one between the App user and the GSP and the second between the GSP and the GSTN System. The cloud-based application is currently used at 60 customers and has processed close to 10 million GST invoices in last three months.

Taxpayers can interface with GSTN System via Go4GST product and services provided by way of applications interface and GSTN Connect. The “Go4GST Filing Services Platform” will be securely connected with the GSTN system through an MPLS connect and all the APIs of GSTN extended to the ASPs and enterprises for them to interact with GSTN and perform the task as required/mandated for being GST compliant.

Talking about the solution, Mohd Shadab, Head – Sales (Cloud), Velocis informs, “The scope of work required us to help GO4GST with One Time deployment of proposed infrastructure for both environments and continue supporting with service desk and support and maintenance post the deployment. Meanwhile, we had to ensure the agility and availability of the application when the workload was high on the filing dates. Since it was a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) based application which means multiple customers were going to use it, each will be filing their returns on a timely basis. Hence, the infrastructure had to be capable enough of handling that much amount of load. It had to be highly available and scalable enough in the sense that if anyone of cloud component gets down then another machine with same configuration and data should be available to accept the load demand. Apart from cost, the mandate requirement for this infrastructure was that all the infra component should be placed in India only.”

As a partner, the role was to help GO4GST’s customers file GST with ease without any glitches, while safeguarding their personal and business details by architecting a robust, highly available, auto scalable, secure and costeffective cloud solution to host their GO4GST’s ASP application. Being a Microsoft partner, it developed the application on Microsoft Azure native services like Application Gateway, Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Web Application Scale Set (VMSS) to run application seamlessly at code and functionality level and meet customer demands.

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Cover Story

partners. For example, Gartner predicts that, by 2020, 75 per cent of organisations will experience visible business disruptions due to I&O skills gaps, which is an increase from less than 20 per cent in 2016.

Training in digital skill sets is necessary and critical for channel partners to thrive in the new age.

Tarun Seth, Managing Director, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic, says, “Today, every company is trying a digital-first approach, and we are trying to help our customers in their digital journey by ensuring that the customer’s IT

infrastructure is ready for a digital leap. From our perspective, we are training and retraining our teams to help our customers get the best possible outcome.”

Partners realise the importance of the right skill sets in winning deals.

Sunny Sharma, CEO, Foetron Systems, says, “Our success mantra is adopting a ‘Digital first approach’. We have been investing heavily on digital channels to reach out to our potential customers, drive consumption with projects like Foetron Cloud Academy and resolve their technical issues

digitally with our very own Foetron Cloud Support portal. We are also investing heavily on leveraging digital to build up scale. One such project is Foetron Cloud Academy with which we aim to help, not only the working professionals to understand the basics of cloud, but also the young college graduates to get the basic overview of what is cloud.”

Digital is now considered to be a mandatory skillset, and essential for winning the respect of global OEMs. RS Shanbhag, Chairman and Managing Director, Valuepoint Group,

CASE STUDY: HOW ZNET TECHNOLOGIES HELPED OCS RESTRUCTURE ITS MAILING SOLUTION

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aipur based ZNet Technologies, one of the first cloud partners of Microsoft from Rajasthan state has helped Orchid Consultancy Services restructure its emailing solution. The company needed cloudbased productivity tools and email services for itself and also wanted to use these tools to help its customers who were facing email deliverability, spam folder and bounce back issues.

With Office 365 adoption, the company improved its collaboration on work projects and fixed its clients’ email issues.

OCS said it has significantly reduced its operational costs (Opex) through this deployment. The role played by the partner and its dedicated 24/7 support provided was able to reduce the project time and rapidly achieve the project target. The OCS’ partnership with ZNet enabled them to retain their customers and add more into its kitty.

ZNet Technologies, which deals in complete support for Azure, Office 365 and Azure Stack; and high-end infrastructure services claims that embracing and bundling Microsoft Office 365 proved to be a business savior decision for OCS and its clients as well. Now, it feels OCS can better manage employees with the culture of connectedness – all employees are using Skype for business for instant Messaging (IM), desktop sharing, web

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conferencing, and video conferencing.

Talking about the technology challenge which OCS was facing, Munesh Jadoun, CEO and Founder, ZNet says, “Email deliverability and bounce-back issues kept them awake at night. Hence, OCS made their decision to adopt Office 365 business plans from ZnetLive. While building its momentum, with customer satisfaction as the prime goal, OCS required intuitive communication platform to support its own and clients’ business communication and collaboration requirements. For its dispersed workforce and customers, it required cloud-based business communication tool to connect with it across the country and worldwide, on the go, for better productivity. They wanted their employees to work better together, to serve their customers better, hence needed a unique messaging and collaboration tool.”

Being into consulting business means understanding the fact that the client has a business problem and needs an effective tailor-made solution. “We had excellent relationship with our clients, but email deliverability issues were paralysing some of our important customers. We were receiving complaints as customers were troubled when their important and urgent mail messages were getting delivered in junk folder

and junk emails in inbox. We were on the brink of losing some of our very important customers, but ZNetLive improved customer service and manage our growth as well. After weighing different solutions, we decided to go with ZNetLive managed Office 365. The solution aimed to fulfill all their needs in a cost-effective way,” informs Saurabh Raut, CEO, OCS. As part of the solution offerings from ZNet, Office 365 Essential and Premium suites helped OCS regain competitive edge which improved its collaboration and addressed its clients’ email deliverability issues. The solution gave the ability of online file storage and sharing with 1 TB of OneDrive storage and business class emails with 50 GB mailbox and calendar. They also benefited from other services that came ingrained with these suites, like Exchange Online for security, Yammer, Skype for Business and more. To prevent spam, there are multiple spam filters in office 365.

Jadoun concludes, “Our deep understanding about our customer business and its business expectations were clearly articulated

by OCS. With our domain knowledge and Microsoft support helped us in winning the trust. We managed to improve productivity, more profitable revenue streams and satisfied client base.”

opines, “In one of my recent meetings, the scope of the entire conversation changed when I brought in the AI piece for L1 and L2 support.

The MNC had a mandate for reducing manpower by automating L1 and L2 support. Our AI skills proved to be the right fit and a big opportunity for us.

Digital transformation is five times faster than traditional transformation – you should be either the first to get in, or fast to follow and we have adopted both approaches in different scenarios.”

Digital in action With the required niche skills, some channel partners are already winning the respect of global players by delivering digital projects effectively. A case in point is Fragma Data Systems, which helped one of India’s leading financial players to develop an advanced customer segmentation model for running monthly campaigns. Since the client’s existing analytics model was not able to scale with large volumes of data (>500GB) (550cr+ records ), it was taking almost 24 days to run each campaign, which put a damper on campaign success. To help the customer resolve this issue, the team of deployed the Spark model on Microsoft Azure HDInsights, which effortlessly supported the scale and flexibility. “Following the implementation of the solution, the overall processing time came down from 24 days (on SAS) to 25 minutes (on Spark/HDInsights), paving the way for the team to run monthly campaigns within the stipulated time to drive USD 100 million revenue,” informs Varun Kumar Reddy B, CEO, Fragma Data Systems.

Another IoT and AI focused partner, TheDataTeam, carried out an IoT based project at one of the large oil and gas retailers in India. The project allowed the company to automate its geographically distributed retail outlets across India by providing live data to the operations team which enabled quick decision making on the operational activities of the corresponding outlet.

This provided the operations team the ability to monitor and manage retail

"WE HAVE BEEN INVESTING HEAVILY ON DIGITAL CHANNELS TO REACH OUTTO OUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS,DRIVE CONSUMPTION WITH PROJECTS LIKE FOETRON CLOUD ACADEMY ."

Sunny Sharma, CEO, Foetron Systems

outlets seamlessly, ensuring transparency and a better customer experience. The completed phase of the project achieved the targeted rollout to 80 retail outlets and better consumer engagement improved operations.

Prior to this project, reporting of retail outlets failure used to take 2-3 days, leading to shut-down of outlets.

Since the data provided by retail outlets are live now, the operations teams now can access specific data from the outlets and act on it accordingly. Besides, operations teams are now equipped enough to plan proactive maintenance of outlets so as to avoid interrupted working of specific retail outlets. With the successes witnessed in the current phase, the organisation is now deploying the solution to other outlets, eventually covering all its outlets pan India, informs Rangarajan Vasudevan- CEO and Co-Founder, TheDataTeam.

Going forward, it will be

"WE ARE LOOKING TO CLOSE 20-30 CASES WHERE WE WILL BE HELPING OUR CUSTOMERS AUTOMATE THE PROCESS AND TAKING ON-PREMISE APPLICATIONS TO CLOUD IN THIS FINANCIALYEAR.FOR US,CLOUD AND MOBILITYARE THE TWO MAIN OFFERINGS OF OUR PORTFOLIO." Ajay Sawant, Managing Director, Orient Technologies

imperative for channel partners to keep investing in digital technologies, as India is on a huge path of digital transformation and offers tremendous opportunities. The best example of the power of digital technologies can be seen from the revenues generated by digitally enabled companies.

Sanchit Vir Gogia, Founder, Greyhound Research, says, “There are more than 300 channel partners in India who are a one-man show, having one product and making one million dollars per year. $300 million is being made by these new agepartners and it is a missed opportunity for these channel players.” Sanchit points out that a majority of these partners depend totally on digital avenues to raise revenues. As one can see, in the digital era, the sky is the limit, and the ability to accelerate depends totally on the channel partner’s abilities.

(With inputs from Rachana Jha)

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Cover Story

CASE STUDY: 'PROFESSR' FOR EASING THE STOCK TRADING Challenges in the current online trading scenario

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ith time we have witnessed changes in banking and trading technologies. For the banking and trading markets, advanced technology has been the major factor behind the transformation. In terms of trading, technology brings many advantages, including faster and automated execution, high frequency trading, freedom and flexibility for traders, etc.

Traders in need of instant, real time stock information have to rely upon searching for stock information on various websites or trading apps, which is a tedious job for them.

The problem arises with the fact that information may be varied and a user may be subjected to combing through long lists of company names to find out his/her choice of investments. In such cases, technology can play a crucial role.

Especially, if we talk about role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in trading, it has added the power to make huge changes. In order to bring one such change for the traders, Researchbytes, promoter of brand Moneypot.in, has partnered with Intelegain Technologies, a Mumbai based technology solutions company, to create and nurture a stock trading chatbot named ‘Professr’, which assists investors with real time stock prices, helps understand the nuances of trading on the Moneypot stock simulation platform.

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The current online stock trading ecosystem spends a huge amount of capital in creating and maintaining multiple user interfaces for consumers. "Various application interfaces need to be programmed, published, and installed by the consumers which involves high investment and operating cost.

Moreover, consumers need to adapt to new updates and additions each time to keep up with the functionalities offered in the new interfaces," says Neeraj Gargi, CTO, Intelegain.

Currently, a user has to either go to various stock trading websites available on the internet or go through the exhaustive process of installing and setting up an account on a trading app. The predicament with searching for stock information on different websites is that the information may be varied and the user may have to search through long lists of company names to take any investment related decision.

Challenges ‘Professr’ overcomes To address the customer's problem, Intelegain Technologies has created an AI-based stock trading chatbot, named ‘Professr.’ A chatbot is like a webpage in a way that it can be used without being downloaded.

“The foremost solution Professr offers is that of a simple, unified consumer experience. The Professr is available on multiple channels; it is for now incorporated with Skype, Slack, Microsoft Team, etc. Going forward, it has plans to be made available on more platforms. The user interface is already familiar to the trader, as various messenger services are part of the daily life. It is a lightweight interface where there is no need to download or register. The Professr, being NLP (Natural Language Processing) equipped, offers a personalised and a simplified way of handling tasks through a natural and

human-like approach to interaction. It provides a shorter and simpler workflow that is easy for a novice investor to understand," mentions Gargi.

The Professr’s stock information is updated in real time from the Moneypot platform’s price feed. It currently provides BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) prices, but plans of extending to various global exchanges are already set in motion.

Moneypot was built on Microsoft .NET framework.

"We have further utilised MS technologies for the Professr in following ways: Serverless compute using Azure functions, node.js as programming language to code business logic in bot, Visual Studio Code as IDE for node.js (and TFS as code repo), MS Azure Bot Framework for bot hosting and deployment on different channels, MS LUIS service to interpret user statements into business logics, MS QnA service to retrieve fixed depth answers for questions related to Professr or usage of Moneypot platform, and, HTTP GET services on Moneypot server build over .Net MVC," states Gargi.

Business impact The users can take free-entry text, which provides a clear idea of what it is; lowers the initial communication friction and presents in erstwhile options. From the very beginning, the intent is help-related and in a form of casual text entry. Professr trading bot is developed to provide a shorter and simpler workflow. Trading websites offer a complex view of the trading market, which a novice may not be able to understand. Professr offers a way for beginners to learn about stock trading through a simple interactive method. Simplicity is the prime reason for Professr being the go-to solution for academic institutions, corporate and individual novice investors to use while trading on Moneypot – the stock trading simulation platform used for training purposes.

Thought Leader

DBS

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: MAKING BANKING INVISIBLE Banking is becoming more and more invisible. Today, customers are more fast paced and so are their banking needs. Transactions – big or small, need to be quick and intelligent. Happy lifestyles play a major role in the lives of our customers. Hence, at DBS, we are making banking joyful “Banking is necessary; banks are not” – Bill Gates

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s customer expectations continue to transform, technology continues to disrupt banking.

Banking industry is moving towards being more agile and nimble. We are all experimenting with banking solutions and making them more evolved. Banks are re-imagining banking to create an integrated ecosystem for the customers by participating in their journeys. So, it is important for us to get inspired by the technology companies and adopt their models of transformation and digital disruption.

With digital wallets, UPI and QR codes, payments have taken lead in being digital to the core. And then there is next level of banking – loans, quick account opening, investments and much more. True digitalisation happens when we talk of banking in entirety and transform that into a complete digital journey for the customer. With Bitcoins and Blockchain further disrupting the industry, the possibility of invisible banking becomes even stronger. I am a firm believer of the fact that the transformation has just begun and bigger surprises await us.

Reimagining banking – a strong ecosystem Look at a consumer today – everything runs on the device he/she owns. It is a strongly knitted network of needs, lifestyle choices, education, family, social network and ofcourse banking. How can we then talk of banking as a standalone act? I believe

that we need to develop an ecosystem for consumers; ecosystem of sorts by weaving in various customer journeys.

Consumer needs, aspirations, consumption patterns, shopping carts, monthly bills, offers, contextual marketing, experiences, the list can go if we continue to deep dive – all these need to be carved into one strong ecosystem.

Plug in or plug out APIs enable building this ecosystem. Moreover, to strive and run through longer races, we need to build on one another. The power of collaborated systems looks infinite. I feel this model helps us capture the best of the world – imagine if best banking builds on best shopping platform, which builds on best deals that in turn builds on best search engine. This has enormous capacity to tune in to the diverse customer journeys. We, at DBS, are excited for this digital transformation powered by our strong API model.

Talking to our systems through world’s largest API platform All in, DBS has launched over 160

APIs in the region across more than 20 categories. More categories will be added in response to demand. The APIs allow other brands, corporates, fin-techs and software developers to “talk” to the bank to access a breadth of services, including funds transfers and peer-to-peer payment services.

More than 50 companies in Singapore such as AIG, McDonalds, MSIG, PropertyGuru, Activpass, Food Panda and sgCarMart are already on the API platform. A huge pool of innovators and programmers is already leveraging these APIs. We are making significant efforts to engage with this pool of innovators and programmers to get constant feedback. Recently, we organised our first 'DBS Developers Night' where we introduced some of the new features and got great feedback on how we can improve the developer experience to make our APIs easy and seamless.

Making banking joyful – engineering the future of banking In our quest to making banking joyful, APIs will have a major role to play. They will facilitate infinite imagination fostering strong innovation led by engineers all around. They will help us penetrate deeper into the customer journeys and build a lifestyle oriented banking system. At DBS Asia Hub 2, one of India’s finest workplaces, our engineering force is building many such APIs and building the future of banking. Visit our API port.

Authored by Mohit Kapoor, Head- DBS Asia Hub 2

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Partner Corner

‘WE HAVE BUILT CAPABILITIES TO DRIVE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION FROM COMPUTERS TO ROCKETS IN TECHNOLOGY’ Bengaluru based Valuepoint Systems has been in the pursuit of creating unique positioning in IT by forming new tech companies, encouraging budding entrepreneurs and tapping the rural manpower. In last 27 years of existence, the company has gained capabilities that allow it to go deeper in energy, healthcare, education, and banking sectors. In an interaction with Sandhya Michu, RS Shanbhag, CMD, Valuepoint Group talks about his vision and plans for business expansion Valuepoint being a conglomeration of 15 tech companies, how you stitch them together?

Our business practice has helped us in building solutions and capabilities to fulfill the customer's need around cloud, analytics, mobility and security today. Our business practice includes multiple technologies. For example, in the cloud, first we built cloud practices and created cloud company followed by partnerships with cloud service providers and acquisition of teams.

After the strategy, learning and adoption takes place in the form of CoE and PoC internally before we take it to the customer. We are a group of 15 vertical centric companies.

Interestingly, 10 companies are consumers of these technologies. One of the advantages is mapping a worldview of our clients that, in return, make us the business partner of their digital transformation. Before we start our dialogue with the consumer, we know the business of client and start looking at various pieces of businesses.

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How Valuepoint is driving digital transformation at its customer's end?

Over the last 27 years of our existence, we have built verticalfocused solutions to keep up the pace.

Currently, there are 500 Fortune companies present in India than global companies – Indian MNCs and SMBs. We started segmenting clients vertically and horizontally and started mapping their future and vision. Then I started aligning and mapping with my

talent, technologies, alliances, and partnerships and then promoting those solutions to clients. We have a customer base of 90,000, of which 2000 customers are very active SMEs to Fortune 500 companies. If we further break down, there are two-three segments: companies who drive digital transformation from its headquarters, companies involving us in a strategic conversation, and companies that are taking advisory and consulting services. We are part of the journey for atleast 25 qualified clients; they are largely from India and few of them are government projects. Some of the marquee projects we have done are for National Health Mission, covering 46 large primary healthcare centres in Karnataka. It was a complete end-toend digital transformation we offered.

We have completed the first phase and are entering into the second phase.

Could you elaborate on Valuepoint’s efforts in empowering rural talent and providing new opportunities?

We are a 3,000 people organisation.

Today 95 per cent of our manpower is

Valuepoint

from smaller cities and remote villages.

For example, our Head of Services hails from Jabalpur in Madya Pradesh and he joined as a Service Engineer for ` 4,000. Today he is the highest paid employee and runs US$10 million services business in India and globally.

In terms of digital transformation, we took the components and matched with what we are doing inside our group of companies and start moving elements; be it email management, workflow, salesforce automation, digital or social. I always encourage and give the opportunity to people from a rural background.

Are you looking for fresh investments; any plans for inorganic growth?

We had options in 2008 when we had plans to go for IPO. But we continued to expand; meanwhile, lots of companies and investors approached me, but, I still feel we have a lot of potential to grow our own.

Having said so, time will definitely come to start looking for strategic investors. Recently, we have started our the US operation, globalising Valuepoint. I think the story for investment will take another two-three years. Overall, we are taking our old and established practices including security, consulting and advisory and tech distribution to global levels.

In your view, how channel platforms help Valuepoint to gear up for future business opportunities?

Partner events help us in finding our blind spots and provide industry insights and inspirations from each other. Most of us are entrepreneurs and visionaries with different leadership styles that give us new vistas to fine tune our offerings. Moreover, it encourages you to take a calculated risk and diversify. How do we know what is there tomorrow; its all depends on when you participate, to know there is future with the support of

reports and trends.

On a personal note, what is your passion and purpose of life?

Valuepoint's purpose to be present wherever technology makes a difference in people's lives; creating new jobs, empowering job creation in rural areas. Back in office, I have a Shanbhag's Wall of Vision 2020.

Among the top is creating 10,000 jobs by 2020, creating up to 25 job creators, becoming the No 1 Employer of Choice in India and donating 10 per cent of the profits for CSR activities directly.

Apart from that, we are aiming to become ` 2000 crore worth revenue organisation with 20 per cent of profitability. Presently, we are looking at a turnover of ` 600 crore, 3000 employees with 15 companies. We will be heading for consolidation and restructuring. Moreover, we are a zero debt company. Every dollar earned is reinvested in the company in the last 27 years.

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Channel Chief

‘WE EXPECT PARTNERS TO BECOME BECOME DATA CHAMPIONS’ In an interaction with CRN, Kaushal Veluri, Director, Channels, Alliances & Sales, NetApp India Marketing & Services, reaffirms the company’s position as a data management company to help customers become data driven. By Nivedan Prakash What is NetApp’s direction in terms of market, technology and innovation?

How are you weaving the channel piece into it?

Our aim is to start making customers data driven. It is all about making sure that the customers understand where their data is, how to manage and analyze, and get insights from it.

Everything boils down to data management today.

With respect to the channel partners, we make sure that they understand the data story completely – be it management of data, whether it is onpremises, on cloud, or hybrid infrastructure, and ensure that the data flows seamlessly in all of these, and finally, the customers are able to get insights from it.

In terms of the evolution of NetApp, we always say that today NetApp is not a storage company; we have evolved as a data management company. In this endeavor, we are helping our data partners become data champions.

What are your efforts to skill and train the partners?

The entire channel partner ecosystem of NetApp is based on three axes. There is innovation on one axis, there are skills on the other axis, and there is revenue on the third axis. We help them innovate and move towards this direction. Partners would like to associate with those vendor companies that can help them catch the next wave and constantly innovate. In order to

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ONE OF THE FOCUS AREAS FOR NETAPP IS TO ENSURE THAT THE ACTIVE PARTNER PERCENTAGE GOES UP BY 10 PER CENT EVERY YEAR build skill-sets among partners, we do training sessions on a quarterly basis.

Besides, we also have a ‘Partner Academy’ wherein we go across multiple cities, and spend half a day with our partners informing them about the company’s new developments and how they can latch on the new opportunities. We take Partner Academy possibly wherever we can. As part of this Academy, we call our channel executives and conduct a quick one-hour free-flowing discussion with partners.

At our flagship event, ‘NetApp Insight’, we announce a lot of our new innovations. Since, not every partner gets to attend this event, we bring it to the local level adding a local flavor to it.

Alongside, we conduct webinars on a regular basis and this is going to be one major focus area this year.

From a revenue perspective, we help our partners make money through backend rebates and incentive schemes.

How do you ensure that the attrition level is minimum among partners?

There are two ways to look at

attrition. The first way is – how do I help the partner organization retain his team, whereas the other way is how do I ensure that I am in touch with the person who is leaving the partner organization. They will undoubtedly move from one organization to another.

Hence, it is important here to remain in touch with them. We are trying to look at how do we maintain relations with these people as they cross organizations.

One way of dealing with attrition is to ensure that the partner organization is constantly skilled, especially their technical knowledge is up-to-date.

What we have realized very interestingly is that once the person gets into NetApp, they tend to be with the company for a long time. This means that they tend to be on NetApp Technology, learn more about it for more time. This is something we have to leverage.

Are you also looking at getting new or specialized partners on board?

There is depth and breadth aspect of it. When I look from the depth aspect, it means working with our existing partner ecosystem, making sure that they have the depth to go and talk to customers. There is also the breadth story, which means getting new-age partners on board. And we are talking to such partners. Another aspect from breadth story is expanding beyond the cities. We are looking at Tier 2 cities, going out and seeing whether we can

NetApp

build our business in cities like Nashik, Vizag and Nagpur. The only reason being that there is demand in these cities.

Moreover, we are looking at acquiring new partners. There are different partner levels in our organization – we have registered partners across categories like Silver, Gold, Platinum and Star. We are very close to getting one partner become a Star member, which is the highest level.

It requires constant revenue and investment in sales and technical resources. We have also found that many of our partners are doing consistent business to go from Silver to Gold category.

We are ensuring that the active partner percentage is higher in comparison to others. One of the focus areas would also be to ensure that at least the active partner percentage goes up by 10 per cent every year. For instance, if we have 10 active partners,

“

ONE OFTHE FOCUS AREAS WOULD ALSO BE TO ENSURE THATAT LEASTTHE ACTIVE PARTNER PERCENTAGE GOES UP BY 10 PER CENT EVERYYEAR

we will make sure that there are 11 or 12 next year.

What are your expectations from partners?

The simple, core expectation that NetApp has from the partner is to get into a solution. We expect them to move

away from the box-selling thought process and get more into solution thinking from a data management perspective. From a broader perspective, it is going to benefit all – us, partners, as well as customers.

The only expectation from our partners is to elevate the conversation to a data management level.

Essentially, we expect partners to become data champions, and from a customer’s perspective, we expect them to make sure that their customers are data driven.

What is your message to the existing partners?

The core message is simple – NetApp is not a storage company; it is a data management organization. It helps customers become data driven, and partners to become data champions, irrespective of what kind of partner you are, whether you are a reseller or SI or MSP.

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CIO Corner

HOW MAHINDRA & MAHINDRA IS REINVENTING ITSELF FOR THE DIGITAL ERA The auto to software conglomerate is taking a huge digital push that will enable it to play a bigger role in the increasingly connected world Srikanth RP srikanth.rp@expressindia.com

A

s a group, Mahindra & Mahindra has always taken a series of ambitious initiatives throughout its history. For instance, it was one of the first players to start creating electric vehicles, before the concept of electric vehicles became popular. More recently, the group announced the launch of India’s first driverless tractor, an innovation that can lead to improved productivity for farmers. Today, even as India looks to embrace electric vehicles in a big way in an aim to reduce dependence on import of oil, the Mahindra & Mahindra Group is placed in a sweet spot.

In this age of digital disruption, the group is tinkering with emerging technologies as an early start can be a massive competitive advantage. For instance, it was one of the first conglomerates to experiment with Blockchain. The Mahindra & Mahindra Group collaborated with IBM to consider the potential of using Blockchain in supply chain finance.

This was a pioneering initiative, as this was one of the first Blockchain-based supply chain finance solution in an industry other than banking.

Being a large conglomerate, the group understands the need of creating new business models using the power of technology. V S Parthasarathy, Group CIO & CFO, Mahindra & Mahindra, echoes the thoughts of his group when he says, “In this age of digital

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disruption, experiential commerce will change how the customer experiences commerce, which in turn, will have an impact on business models.

Organisations have to think on how they can help customers experience a ‘wow’ factor. I want all of our industries to be the trendsetters in the digital world. My vision is that all our 21 industries will be digital world leaders in their own ways, and IT will be our partner in this.”

As a starting point, the group has already started creating a common integrated customer database of all Mahindra customers. Companies within the group function as part of federated structure, with their own strategic and decision mechanism serving their customers independently. However, this is a digital initiative to consolidate the customer data of various companies, to provide one view to the group.

Parthasarathy says that organisations need to rethink on how their business models must change.

“The new world will be B2C – it will not be a world built to last, but it will be a world built to change. Your old cost structure will have no place in the new world, so you have to reset and reboot your costs. Every organisation should continue to dramatically think how do we enable business, enhance it, and engender. Seventy per cent of the focus today is on enabling business and 30 per cent on enhancing and engendering, but in the new world, it should be vice versa. In order to be a value creator, organisations will have to commercialise business models of IT in terms of products and solutions, look at the customer as the king and focus on creating immersive digital experiences for them.” The group has started acquiring companies that fit this vision.

For example, Tech Mahindra acquired UK-based firm, The BIO Agency, which specialises in transforming customer experience using digital services.

One of the best examples that explains the group’s thinking is the SYOUV platform which has been designed to help a customer who is currently in the pre-purchase phase. It provides a collection of important information regarding a Mahindra vehicle. It also offers personalised recommendations based on the customer's actions on the platform. A feature named 'Talk to Expert' allows customers to get answers to their queries in real-time through audio/text

Mahindra & Mahindra

chat. The ‘3D Discovery’ shows various features of a Mahindra vehicle in a rich 3D format. There is also a 'Collaborative Exploration' feature on offer through which, users can invite their friends on Facebook and email to collectively customise Mahindra vehicles. More recently, to help probable customers have a better experience of its e20 Plus electric car, the group is providing virtual reality devices at select dealership outlets to highlight key features of its car.

Predictive maintenance In the enterprise, the notion of predictive maintenance using IoT is well known. Mahindra & Mahindra has used IoT intelligently to bring in a new level of experience for vehicle owners.

The group launched ‘DiGiSENSE’, a platform that connects Mahindra vehicles, tractors, trucks and construction equipment to the cloud, opening up a whole new dimension to the experience of vehicle ownership.

This launch made the company the first OEM in India to integrate its product line-up onto a cloud-based technology platform. This platform enables owners, fleet operators, drivers, dealers and service teams to access vital information about their vehicles, trucks, tractors or construction equipment on a real time basis from any location.

“With 'DigiSense, it will be the first time in India that we will be able to do servicing, sales and solutions – all digitally – across our portfolio,” states Parthasarathy.

Similarly, drivers can contact emergency breakdown services or pull up a route planner at the touch of a button, fleet owners and dealers can track the location of their vehicles in real time, while remote diagnostics and reports allow service teams to monitor the vehicle’s health and productivity parameters, on a real time basis.

Taking a cue from Uber and Ola, the group has launched an online platform, SmartShift, that connects cargo owners and transporters. The technology provided by a company incubated by Mahindra & Mahindra, aggregates demand and helps cargo owners find the right transporter or

MAJOR DIGITAL INITIATIVES ◗ DiGiSENSE (Connected Vehicle platform): DiGiSENSE is a technology solution that connects Mahindra vehicles, tractors, trucks and construction equipment to the cloud, opening up a whole new dimension to the experience of vehicle ownership.Its launch has made the company the first OEM in India to integrate its product line-up onto a cloud-based technology platform. ◗ Blockchain supply chain financing: Mahindra, along with IBM, is developing a cloud based Blockchain solution for supply chain financing. This is designed to transform supplier-to-manufacturer trade finance transactions through a permissioned distributed ledger. The blockchain-based supply chain finance solution will enable all parties involved in the transaction to act on the same shared ledger, with each party updating only their part of the process, ensuring efficiency, consistency, trust and transparency, while safeguarding sensitive information ◗ SmartShift: SmartShift is a technology enabled load exchange platform. SmartShift will act as an exchange platform for cargo owners and transporters, enabling them to work with each other. Cargo owners (both businesses and individual users) can access the SmartShift service through a world class mobile app (available on Android), the website or the dedicated call centre.

◗ Trringo: Trringo is a first-of-its-kind tractor and farm equipment rental business that aims to raise the level of mechanization in Indian farming. Not every farmer can afford his own tractor. Small farmers ask for tractors from the few who own those, leading to uncertainty, compromise on quality of tractors or equipment, and often, disappointment. That's where Trringo comes into the picture.

Now, whenever farmers need a tractor or any farm equipment, they can simply call Trringo, or use its mobile app, and place their order. They will receive a well-maintained tractor along with a professional driver with utmost ease. Not only can they get their work done in a stress-free manner, with consistent use of mechanisation, their productivity increases too.

logistics provider based on specific parameters such as weight and shipment size. This has become extremely popular as transparent and competitive pricing is visible to both cargo owners and transporters. It is also possible to track and trace vehicles to ensure safety of cargo.

Tweaking the Uber model, Mahindra has launched agricultural rental equipment services. Using an app (Trinngo), farmers can take on rent tractors and equipments on a pay-peruse basis. Orders can be booked using an app, which are then passed on to the nearest franchisee using location based mapping.

Another innovative app called the ‘With You Hamesha app’ enables customers to check their car's service history, book a service slot and even create a job card to get an online service estimate. It also allows users to track servicing of their vehicles and establish a video connection with a

relationship manager to get real time updates on the service. Customers can also opt to pay the service bill online through the app and can request the vehicle to be delivered to a specific address.

The future The most striking aspect about Mahindra’s digital transformation vision is that the group is taking an innovative approach and is willing to tweak established digital models to the market it serves. The digital world needs quick adaptation and willingness to learn from different industries. This is a world as Parthasarathy describes, ‘a world built to change’, and companies who consistently and quickly adapt will lead. The Mahindra & Mahindra group has shown this agility by willing to partner with startups and create innovative business models using the power of technology.

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Sophos

Advertorial

FIREWALL BEST PRACTICES TO BLOCK RANSOMWARE

By Sunil Sharma

W

anna, Petya, and other ransomware attacks have affected countless organisations. While Wanna and Petya spread like worms, many ransomware variants leverage social engineering tricks through phishing email attacks, spam, or web downloads to gain entry to your network through more conventional means. Lot of time cyber attacks are as sophisticated as malware lurking in common files like Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, or executables such as updates for common trusted applications. Hackers have become very effective at making these files seem benign or obfuscating the malware to get past traditional signature-based antivirus detection.

According to a survey, 90 per cent of businesses in India said that it has become harder for them to combat malware threats. Further 47 per cent opined that stopping malware threats have become harder over the last year.

Let’s try to understand why this happened. Is it because 57 per cent of network traffic goes unidentified? Or that more than 60 per cent IT managers are unaware of how their bandwidth is consumed? Whatever be the case, this lack of control is costing organisation a big deal of time, money and resources, with an average of 182 hours being consumed to only remediate infected devices.

It is imperative that the firewall, which is your first defense against threats entering your network, is able to control, secure and manage all traffic moving within your network. Together with endpoint protection, it’s an integral pillar of security infrastructure. Despite the importance of its role in defenses, the survey revealed that firewalls are failing organisations when it comes to delivering the protection they need. On an average, Indian organizations face 26

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infected machines a month; approximately 60 per cent higher infected devices in comparison to the global average.

A few simple steps can at least ensure that a bad situation isn’t made worse, but the above data points suggests that too many organisations have failed to understand the importance of a proactive approach.

Let’s look at five areas that deserve attention.

1. Ensure you have the right protection, including a modern highperformance next-gen firewall IPS engine and sandboxing solution 2. Reduce the surface area of attack as much as possible by thoroughly reviewing and revisiting all portforwarding rules to eliminate any non-essential open ports. Every open port represents a potential opening in your network. Where possible, use VPN to access resources on the internal network from outside rather than port-forwarding 3. Make sure your open ports are secured by applying suitable IPS protection to the rules governing that traffic 4. Apply sandboxing to web and email traffic to ensure all suspicious active files coming in through web downloads and as email attachments

are being suitably analysed for malicious behaviour before they get onto your network 5. Minimise the risk of lateral movement within the network by segmenting LANs into smaller, isolated zones or VLANs that are secured and connected together by the firewall.

Be sure to apply suitable IPS policies to rules governing the traffic traversing these LAN segments to prevent exploits, worms, and bots from spreading between LAN segments 6. Automatically isolate infected systems. When you encountered a cyber attack, it’s important that your IT security solution be able to quickly identify compromised systems and automatically isolate them until they can be cleaned up (either automatically or through manual intervention).

As attacks become more complicated, sophisticated and coordinated than ever before, it is encouraging to see that Indian businesses of all sizes are moving from deploying a layered security approach to a more synchronised security methodology. It was heartening to observe in ‘The Dirty Secrets of Network Firewalls’ survey that India tops the list, that displayed enthusiasm if their organisation’s firewall could isolate infected machines automatically. Given the time and cost implications of fixing infected machines manually, it’s not surprising that most of India IT managers want their firewall to automatically remediate threats.

Threats are here to stay. We need to acknowledge and prepare our defenses in order to stay a step ahead of the crooks.

(The author is the Managing Director, Sales at Sophos India & SAARC)

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CXO Speak

‘WE HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED IN CORE CHANNEL POLICY’ With the support of the channel, Lenovo is committed for profitable growth of its partners and believes in the core channel. Highlighting the commitment to be the most channel friendly company in 2018, S Ganesh, Head – Small & Medium Business, Lenovo India, shares more details

By Rachana Jha What's Lenovo's direction in terms of market, technology, environment and, innovation? What are your plans for 2018?

Lenovo is on a growth path. From the consumer part of last quarter, we have become No 1 PC seller in India; we are one of the top three IT players. If you put some of the verticals like consumer, SMB together, we are always within the top three brands which are always under consideration. The brand’s popularity is also increasing every year which is also getting us deeper connect with the customers. We always believed in core channel policy in terms of channel. Core channel policy is something that we bet big with the partner, research strategic alignment with the partner. We try to expand as much as possible with the same partner; we call it our core channel policy. The objective of this policy is to grow with the partner, strategic alignment and operational alignment.

Many of our partners have been working with us since the inception of Lenovo. They are there with us as exclusive partner, distribution partner or as multi-brand partner. We have always believed in the policy of profitable growth; we have also grown profitably with them. Lenovo is more partnerfriendly among the top three brands, because we have multiple things which

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CONTRIBUTION OF LENOVO'S EXPRESS STORES IN INDIA IS AROUND 12 TO 13 PER CENT. TOTAL CONTRIBUTION OF DIRECT AND INDIRECT EXCLUSIVE STORES IS 25 TO 26 PER CENT connect us with our partners. For instance, we have partner advisory committee. Internally we call it LEPAC – Lenovo Partner Advisory Committee. We have our core channel group where we connect on analysing the equations as much as possible. We also conduct various meetings at the regional level, ensuring that our engagement with partners is constant. We firmly believe that we need to have strong engagement with our partners. The engagement is not only restricted to a Tier 2 partners; we always engage with the Tier 1 partners as well – like Ingram, Redington, Citrix, etc. In Tier 2 markets, we have regional distributors, exclusive stores, and multi-brand stores, alongside online presence. Moreover, we also engage with Tier 3 partners which is one level below RD. We have a model called 'Express' which includes exclusive

stores under RD. Our team engages with this set of partners, where their concerns are addressed. We always believe in the policy of strong engagement model under a win-win situation.

Under LEPAC, our 4-P plans for the year in the quarter is being discussed our partners, and modifications are done in line with their suggestions. We are looking at a strong growth in 2018 when the market is estimated to be almost flat – we might grow in some verticals. We want to raise our market share and reach at the second position in consumer vertical next year.

What’s the total channel base that addresses Lenovo's consumer market?

We have around 200 exclusive stores and around 200 multi-brand partners.

We have around seven top LFRs – Large Format Retails. We engage with top three online channels: Flipkart, Amazon and Paytm. We also have 55 regional distributor partners across the country, alongside an express store which is under RD. Currently, we have a base of around 400 stores. We have Tier 3 base which is supplied by RD, wherein we have 6,000 partners.

How is your internal team positioned to take care of the entire process?

For consumers, we have a sales

Lenovo India

team, which is further split into four sub regions: East, West, North and South. There are also SRGMs – Sub Regional General Managers; RSMs work under them. Under RSMs, we have distribution and retail RCM. Furthermore, we have HO team which consists of the product team. We also have a vertical team, and Tier 1 team.

There is also a separate team, supported by the marketing team, which is supported by the finance team, which is then supported by the claims team and legal team.

There are multiple teams forming a complete arm. We also have a partner engagement cell, wherein partners can post any kind of query and get response within 48 hours. For partner's benefit, we are also launching a new portal called 'LPP' (Lenovo Partner Portal) from this quarter. LPP is a holistic gamut where a partner can log in and see pricelist, marketing campaigns, various marketing elements which are available and various products. They will be able to download anything from this portal – this is a worldwide tool.

Are there international best practices that have been adopted in India?

For us, China is a model that we always look forward to. In China, we are the single largest brand in terms of consumer commercial. We have followed some of best practices in China, and we want to follow those practices in India as well. In China, there are large RDs, spread across large districts as well as states. We have replicated that concept in India. There is a reason behind creating this model – we have to increase our base in smaller towns. We have around more than 400 partners in this set of towns.

Contribution of our Express stores in India is around 12 to 13 per cent. Total contribution of direct and indirect

people who are engaged; they have to be trained to promote our products. It is important to sell a product based on its features and not on its price. We have very deep calendar for every quarter to ensure that there are training initiatives.

“

WE TRYTO EXPAND AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE WITH THE SAME PARTNER; WE CALL IT OUR CORE CHANNEL POLICY.THE OBJECTIVE OFTHIS POLICY IS TO GROW WITH THE PARTNER,STRATEGIC ALIGNMENTAND OPERATIONAL ALIGNMENT

exclusive stores is 25 to 26 per cent.

That’s a significant mix for us.

A lot of training is required to address customer requirements. Are such efforts being put for the consumer?

Training is big part for any organisation; it is important to project your product in front of a customer. We have our national trainer, who trains on products and alo the soft skills of people. The scope of training includes Lenovo employees to external field force consisting of promoters etc. We also train partners, managers and

What are your expectations from partners?

Growth is the first thing – we would want to grow along with our partners.

Secondly, something which is important for us especially after GST implementation, is ‘hygiene parameters’. One of the hygiene parameters is maintaining price parity, followed by selling within the territory in which we are supposed sell. For example, retail should restrict to retail within the same store. If you’re a distributor, you should restrict to the same territory. Promoting the product in the right manner is also crucial. In a highly competitive market, you should give the best experience to a customer.

Customer expectation is the single biggest thing that needs to be addressed. The other important thing is after-sales service and Lenovo leverages this service – our time is the lowest in terms of solving the problem.

What's your larger message to the existing and prospective partners?

The year 2018 is definitely a year of growth. We would come with the strongest products and the best products in coming years with the best of value-for-money. Ultimately we need the support of the channel. We are committed for profitable growth of our partners and we believe in the core channel. We have always wanted to give a message to the entire trade channel that we are committed to be the most channel friendly company in 2018.

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Channel Chief

POST FINANCIAL RESTRUCTURING, AVAYA IS OPERATING AT ITS FULL POTENTIAL In an interaction with CRN, Fadi Moubarak, Vice President – Channel, Avaya shares insights into the company’s strategies post Chapter 11 and how it is creating a federated application development model for the channel ecosystem By Nivedan Prakash Avaya recently emerged out of Chapter 11 successfully. How significant is this development in terms of winning customers and building channel partnerships?

It’s an exciting time for Avaya as the recent restructuring has made our balance sheet very strong and also freed a lot of cash that we could reinvest into the business. The restructuring happened in such a way that it is now giving us a financial competitive advantage. From the risk compliance perspective, a few of the customers had put discussions with us on hold. But now, we are having fullfledged business discussions without obstacles. We are now operating at our full potential.

This is, off course, complemented by the increment in our free cash flow by $300 million less of interest payments.

This will be available for strategic investments into the company, our partners, or any other area where we decide to go. We remained confident and that is why you see that in the past three quarters during the financial restructuring, our revenues did not decline; we kept on winning new customers. Some were on hold, but we did not lose any major customers.

We were aware of the fact that this adverse situation was not because of our ability to innovate and that’s why

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TODAY, THERE ARE AT LEAST 8 TO 10 APPLICATIONS PARTNERS WHO ARE DEVELOPING THE SOLUTIONS ON THE AVAYA PLATFORM we did not fire people. We did cost optimisation like any other company, because the problem was not confidence. It was something in the balance sheet structure, which we had to agree with our creditors on the way forward.

In this endeavour, we are utilising the Partner Edge Tour to share our story with the partners, put the action plan forward, discuss strategy, what’s in the store for them, where are the market opportunities, and show them the way we can achieve the joint priorities together. And it’s just not about the growth. We are aware of the opportunities and our market relevance. We have taken an innovative approach, wherein we are no longer pushing our products into the market, but the solutions that are built around our products as well as third party products. We propose our partners to resell and have given them a free hand to build their own solutions on the top of our offerings.

Being a global company, we realise that one size does not fit all. Hence, whatever is the faster route to the market we are ready to take it. The different markets are at the different stages of adoption of transformation technologies. And we do acknowledge the fact that the best people to help us are our partners, as they are closer to the customers. We constantly create a dialogue with our partners and interact with them to show our growth path.

Has this called for a realignment of your go-to-market strategy?

It is not the financial restructuring that has called for realignment of our go-to-market strategy. Our strategy has been realigned in line with the changes in the industry, technology, and consequently, consumer requirements.

Moreover, in this digital disruption era, it is not about the technology that you are using for digital transformation. Rather, it is about the customer experience you are driving and how you are evolving to serve your customers better using digital technologies. The understanding of customers and markets comes from our presence with the partners with whom we work to identify the right roadmap for digital transformation.

Avaya

As part of your portfolio, you look at different geographies. In your interactions with partners from India, do you come across any specific challenges that are unique and require a different approach?

Every country has some uniqueness and comes with different flavours. India is very advanced on integration and business process outsourcing. It has been traditionally ahead of others in terms of adopting the technology, especially the skills that people here possess. In that sense, we do not face skill challenges in India. Besides, India has its own financial dynamics that you must take into consideration while evaluating the solutions.

Similarly, every country has its own set of dynamics. That is why you see cloud solutions much more advanced in countries where the indirect costs like cost of resources and people are high.

We see that in the APAC region, where Australia is the most advanced on cloud adoption. But at the same time, it does not mean that they are advanced on technology adoption. These are two different things because cloud is not an advanced technology; it is a way to consume technology. It is a financial model. The technology behind cloud could be advanced or basic. People often believe that everything on cloud is an advanced technology.

India is definitely at the forefront of advanced technology adoption. Here, we monitor the different vertical industries with the help of our partners and not what is happening in technology. And we come up with solutions that are aligned with the business priorities of different industries where we are operating.

When we talk about digital technologies, India is still facing the shortage of highly skilled partners.

Are you putting any efforts towards the enablement of your channel in this direction?

Technical training of our partners is an ongoing journey. The release of new products and solutions requires us to update our partners. Today, everybody’s biggest obstacle or criteria for business success is not the technical

skills. It is about whether we are working on the correct digital transformation strategy. Success or failure is never technical. We must see whether we are ahead of the customer requirements. This is where we see digital transformation getting succeeded or failing.

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INDIA IS VERYADVANCED ON INTEGRATION AND BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING.IT HAS BEEN TRADITIONALLYAHEAD OF OTHERS IN TERMS OF ADOPTING THE TECHNOLOGY,ESPECIALLY THE SKILLS THAT PEOPLE HERE POSSESS.IN THAT SENSE,WE DO NOT FACE SKILL CHALLENGES IN INDIA.BESIDES,INDIA HAS ITS OWN FINANCIAL DYNAMICS THATYOU MUST TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION WHILE EVALUATING THE SOLUTIONS

Avaya has transitioned from hardware to a software and services company. How having a right channel strategy is helping the company?

We started working on the strategy about 12 to 18 months ago. Today, there are at least 8 to 10 applications partners who are developing the solutions on the Avaya platform. Then, there are traditional partners who are hiring new talents from software development background.

Besides, the box seller partners are also gradually transforming into the application development partners. All our large partners, who were in the past more focused in the system and the implementation, now have an application development practice. That’s the way the partners are transforming.

Here, we are working through and allowing these partners to develop solutions on our platform, which they can go and sell back to their customers. We are embracing the partner ecosystem and asking them to see the strength of our platform and build solutions which the customers need. Partners can monetise those solutions not only in India, but whereever the customer needs. It’s a much federated application development model.

What sort of messaging do you want to give to the partners and what’s the roadmap for the next couple of years?

We have a few simple messages for the partners. The first one is related to the growth, wherein we are growing together with them. Our strategy is to work with our partners, whether it’s full engagement, addressing the business journeys of our customers, or building complete solutions and not just selling our products and solutions. We encourage them to build their own intellectual property or collaborate among themselves.

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CIO Corner

TECHNOLOGY HAS THE POWER TO TRANSFORM HEALTHCARE IN INDIA Riding high on the rapid stride of digital transformation in the health sector in India, Royal Philips, a Netherlands based healthcare player believes this change will bring strong opportunities for the global player. The company is looking to bring in a major shift in the way it operates in India so far and making the business processes simpler and seamless.

By Rachana Jha

T

echnology has the power to transform healthcare, both inside and outside the hospital. It’s a huge shift for Royal Philips. “We are 125year-old, Europe’s largest electronics maker with an established connect as a consumer electronics brand, but now we are leveraging this strength in the field of health-tech so we could drive better outcomes for patients. Most of our products revolve around healthcare, lifestyle, and wellness. Our life-saving health equipment is used in hospitals worldwide,” explains Royal Philips’ Group Chief Information Officer, Alpana J Doshi.

Doshi steers the technology initiatives at Royal Philips and manages 17 countries including India.

As part of digital initiatives, the company is taking a big step to implement ‘One ERP’ platform where the India market will be connected to

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rest of the world. This step aims to simplify the access to the market for the goods, while the supply chain will be more transparent and robust. Another area for the company is to be part of various Government of India led projects like Digital India, Smart Cities, as consumers and healthcare providers are looking for connected devices.

When asked how she looks at India’s market contribution as compared to other APAC markets, Doshi states, “In APAC, I still think India needs to play a big role and keep the pace up. I am trying to get the foundation done from Philips' standpoint and get the infrastructure to be digitally ready. It is one of my low-hanging areas to begin with. India is a very complex market and it’s not easy to maneuver around. A supply chain is not fully automated and largely offline. If aspects which are mundane in SAP environment if you are

sending the goods, then how do you get automation in terms of notification and invoices. These things take lots of time and manpower. We need to work towards changing the dynamics in the broader landscape which means that many people will have to change the way of working. In the whole of Asia Pacific, we see tremendous business opportunities in India.”

Technology is the backbone For Royal Philips, the journey has been around building the digital ecosystem for its health-tech services.

The company is banking high on the Internet of Things (IoT) and creating connected healthcare experience. On top of that, it is using robotics from its enterprise IT point of view. “We are putting efforts to automate the business process and applying technologies like Blockchain, virtual

Royal Philips

reality, augmented reality and robotics to build PoC for our healthcare services first and scale up the size later.

Healthcare in remote areas is also our major focus. Despite the connectivity and infrastructure related challenges, we are continuing to invest more in creating solutions, where it has now made rapid strides,” Doshi highlights.

Explaining the company’s approach, she comments, “Healthcare is now based on sick care. We wait for people to get ill and then fix them. That’s not a sustainable model if healthcare is to scale to meet the needs of our growing population. We have to help people before they get sick and we have to treat the illness.”

Philips’ medical devices such as MRI and CT scanner machines are connected to their cloud servers, which contain over 23 petabytes of data, tracking over 250 million patients around the world. “Technology allows a healthcare provider to interrogate that data and do critical diagnostic support at the point of care. It is enabling a lot of new experiences, but my role is to make that technology usable for the users. We use augmented reality for a surgical navigation system. Another recent project was an ultrasound on-the-go and imaging app, designed for healthcare practitioners serving in remote villages to conduct diagnostic checks via a simple transponder and an Android mobile phone,” says Doshi.

Priorities in India The January 2018 kick-off for Royal Philips is all about driving digital health services and introducing common and harmonised processes for the India market that are seamless for the rest of the world. It intends to leverage the competency and talent pool of India much more than before. “Technology will play an enabler’s role for us. We have a target of touching three billion lives by 2020. Through our digital initiatives like ‘One ERP’ and ecommerce, we can plan definite plans for the local market,” Doshi asserts.

One of the milestones the company is achieving in 2018 is bringing 50-60 kinds of ERPs together in order to come

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TECHNOLOGYWILL PLAYAN ENABLER’S ROLE FOR US.WE HAVE A TARGET OFTOUCHING THREE BILLION LIVES BY 2020.THROUGH OUR DIGITAL INITIATIVES LIKE ‘ONE ERP’AND E-COMMERCE,WE CAN PLAN DEFINITE PLANS FOR THE LOCAL MARKET

to one seamless environment. So far countries like North America, Africa, Central and Eastern European Countries are connected and now it is going towards completing the rest of the world this year.

The company had a number of ERPs like SAP, Oracle and others. But now it has consolidated its vision to have one SAP environment. The strategy is in the architecture of going from so many to maybe a half a dozen in the beginning and further come down to single ERP. “We will connect 17 markets from health systems business; be it diagnostics, imaging or connected healthcare products. We are going live

this March in India. We are launching one common ERP worldwide in March 2018 and the same ERP to be used by India. It’s a big transformation as it will change the way as our personal health business users work. Where they can ship the goods directly, there is no need to have intermediaries, they can have the automation done from notification, invoices standpoint, you can order the product and change the order. Like Fadex and Amazon kind of experience.

The breakthroughs have been both in change management and technology come up with one common technology rather than a plethora of technologies exist,” Doshi concludes.

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CXO Speak

‘CHANNEL HAS BEEN AT THE CORE OF OUR STRATEGY’ In an exclusive interaction with CRN, Shrinivas Chebbi, President, Buildings Business, Schneider Electric shares insights into the company's channel strategy and how customers and partners are leveraging its EcoStruxure IoT platform

By Rachana Jha How critical has been the role of channel in Schneider Electric’s growth story?

The channel has been at the core of our strategy. Today if you look at the 28 billion Euro turnover of Schneider Electric Group worldwide, more than 55 per cent to 60 per cent of this goes through different types of channels to the customers. We’ve got channel partners of all sizes and scale. On one side, we may have a channel partner dealing with just one technology of Schneider Electric and there are those dealing with the entire spectrum of our technologies.

We serve primarily four markets through our technological platforms – Buildings, Residential, Industry, and Energy and Infrastructure. To serve these markets, we have got five technology domains. And our channel partners leverage these technologies to address the customer requirements.

We have a much matured channel model, wherein there are different types of channel partners, including distributors who are basically stocking and then selling our products. Then, there are 'panel builder partners', under which there are further three or four sub-segments. Besides, there are system integrators.

We run different programs for these partners. In fact, we have got one of the most admired channel partner programs for the system integrators

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ONE OF THE FIRST PILOTS OF SCHNEIDER’S ECOSTRUXURE IOT PLATFORM IN INDIA WAS CONDUCTED FOR THE NAYA RAIPUR SMART CITY around the world, called 'EcoXpert', which is an esteemed partnership between Schneider Electric and the world's leading technology providers with best-in class system integration competencies. It is a worldwide network of our trained and certified partners in building optimisation, power management, and energy efficiency.

As far as the EcoXpert channel partner programme is concerned, how significant has been this move?

EcoXpert also happens to be a 2017 CRN Five Star Partner Program Award winner worldwide. It is one of the most matured and comprehensive programmes and rewarded as the most advanced programme by the governments as well. EcoXpert programme is actually part of EcoStruxure, which is Internet of Things (IoT) platform of Schneider Electric. This EcoStruxure platform is the key spearhead offer for EcoXperts.

EcoStruxure is the most effective

technology IoT platform for creating huge efficiency and productivity gains within the enterprises. This platform makes even more sense especially in view of all the urbanisation, digitisation, Make in India programme of the government and Smart City initiative. All these technologies, which are within Schneider Electric’s core areas, are available to our EcoXperts channel partners so that they can create a big difference to any infrastructure, building or industrial setup.

Can you share more details of EcoStruxure IoT platform?

When you look at EcoStruxure IoT platform, it is by far recognised one of the most comprehensive technology stack. The EcoStruxure architecture and platform deliver IoT-enabled solutions at scale for building, grid, industry and data center customers. The enhanced architecture and platform is open, scalable and interoperable, connecting the three core layers of Schneider Electric’s technology stack, from connected products, to edge control, to applications, analytics and services.

This next generation EcoStruxure delivers enhanced value around safety, reliability, efficiency, sustainability, and connectivity of IoT-enabled operations.

EcoStruxure enables Schneider Electric, its partners and end-user customers to develop scalable and

Schneider Electric

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WE SERVE PRIMARILY FOUR MARKETS THROUGH OUR TECHNOLOGICAL PLATFORMS – BUILDINGS,RESIDENTIAL, INDUSTRY,AND ENERGYAND INFRASTRUCTURE.TO SERVE THESE MARKETS,WE HAVE GOT FIVE TECHNOLOGY DOMAINS

converged IT/OT solutions that deliver innovation at every level to an organisation or enterprise. Leveraging connectivity and data to create controls and actionable business insights, with the combined power of analytics and closed-loop applications, Schneider Electric empowers customers and partners to augment operations to reach new levels of operational efficiency, sustainability, asset performance and people productivity.

EcoStruxure fosters open innovation and interoperability and is developed in partnership with leading standards organisations and best-in-class technology leaders.

EcoStruxure builds on Schneider Electric’s long-standing product and system leadership to provide the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of inter-operable and cloudconnected and/or on-premise technologies organised around its three layers of technology innovation: ◗ The first layer builds on Schneider Electric’s core competency in developing connected products with embedded intelligence, such as sensors, medium and low voltage breakers, drives and actuators ◗ The Edge Control layer gives organisations the critical capability to manage their operations onpremise as well as from the cloud depending on their needs. This

includes connected control platforms with remote access, advanced automation and operator override capabilities. Local control and firewall protection is included to maximise the benefits, especially for mission-critical applications ◗ Schneider Electric’s focused investment in R&D and product development in the critical areas of software, analytics and services, coupled with the integration of recent acquisitions such as Invensys, Telvent and Summit Energy forms the third layer of the stack – a portfolio of apps, analytics and services. EcoStruxure enables the most extensive breadth of vendor-agnostic apps, analytics and services on open IP protocols in order to work with any hardware, system, or control EcoStruxure is designed to meet the core customer challenge of implementing IoT solutions seamlessly, cost-effectively and at scale. The redefined IoT platform bridges the IT/OT gap and connects the three core layers of Schneider Electric’s innovation technology stack to maximise value for customers Is there any government agency in India which is using the EcoStruxure IoT platform or any enterprises for that matter?

One of the first pilots of Schneider’s EcoStruxure IoT platform in India was conducted for the Naya Raipur Smart City. It has now been more than a year and a half. India along with the US, China and France has been one of the top few countries in which the EcoStruxure IoT platform was rolled out comprehensively. India has seen a strong and a huge adoption of EcoStruxure.

The same platform is deployed for some of the promising smart city projects in India. For example, Naya Raipur Smart City Project. This is going to be setup with EcoStruxure. We have got a large contract which is in execution right now and this is fitted with a complete set of features of EcoStruxure. The same IoT platform was deployed long ago in Jagannath Puri temple as well as the Puri city, which witnesses the Nabakalebara festival, where about 4.5 million-5 million people congregate.

Besides, the country’s maiden net zero energy building being built in Bengaluru will be on EcoStruxure IoT platform. The three of the top five automobile manufacturers have embraced the EcoStruxure platform.

Life Sciences Technology and Life Science manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies - all have embraced this platform strongly. So, India has been one of the most aggressive adopters of EcoStruxure.

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Channel Chief

DATA BREACHES, CYBER THREATS IN BFSI, HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY REPRESENT A HUGE OPPORTUNITY FOR BLACKBERRY The enterprise software arm of BlackBerry has been in the turnaround mode after it lost its handset market to Apple and Samsung, from being a leader in the handset market to a complete software and services company. BlackBerry made great strides in executing its business strategy in 2017. The company believes it’s no longer in turnaround mode and is pointed in the right direction. Richard Mcleod, Global Vice President – Enterprise Software Channels, BlackBerry talks about the ‘new’ BlackBerry, and getting focused on ‘Enterprise of Things’

By Sandhya Michu What has been the revival journey after BlackBerry abandoned its hardware roots with sole focus on its software, continuing in the communications space, but also putting more emphasis on security?

It has been an amazing journey for BlackBerry, from being a leader in the handset market to a complete software and services company. As our CEO John Chen said, BlackBerry made great strides in executing the business strategy in 2017. We are no longer in turnaround mode and are pointed in the right direction. And we’ve made that transformation impressive financially as well. With seven consecutive quarters of positive operating income and an enterprise cyber security software and

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FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE, BLACKBERRY HAS A LITTLE OVER 1,800 PARTNERS; 275 OF THESE ARE IN APAC AND 56 IN INDIA, OUT OF WHICH EIGHT HAVE REACHED GOLD STATUS services business that’s growing at double-digit rates, based on our last quarter financials. (This is based on our previous financials; we are in a quiet period).

If you think about what is the ‘new’ BlackBerry, it is a pretty exciting

business. We are all about connecting people and their devices in the most secure manner. If you look behind the scenes, it is also transforming how enterprises develop, market, distribute and sell products. This is what BlackBerry calls, ‘The Enterprise of Things’ or EoT. BlackBerry’s focus is on providing enterprises such as the world’s largest banks, hospitals, law firms with the highest standard of security, ultimately enabling them to be BlackBerry Secure.

How is BlackBerry enterprise business doing in India and rest of the market?

What are your expectations from the India market post the partner expansion strategy?

BlackBerry

We are very excited to see the growth opportunities in India. As BlackBerry has transformed to be a leading security software company, we have been very focused on bringing the global customer experience through top brands in banking, government and regulated verticals. We are seeing growing opportunities in the India market. India is a crucial market for BlackBerry, with millions of small and large organisations that are vulnerable to attacks and breaches – and they need our help.

If we look at the global cyber security market, it was expected to grow from US$137.85 billion in 2017 to US$231.94 billion by 2022. According to NASSCOM, the Indian IT industry is set to reach a size of US$ 350-400 billion by 2025. The country can build a cyber security product and services industry of US$35 billion by 2025 and generate a skilled workforce of one million in the security sector.

For our leading security solutions and services, India is a major market.

Data shows spend on IT by banking and security firms in India is expected to grow 8.6 per cent year-on-year, with the potential to be a US$8 billion market by this year. Interestingly enough, the data breaches and cyber threats/crimes are focused on banking and financial, and healthcare industries – this represents a huge opportunity for BlackBerry in the marketplace.

As we leverage our over 30 years of experience in secure mobile application delivery, we are truly finding the market moving towards us. As companies are aggressively moving towards mobilefirst applications, there is a massive shift towards software as a service.

Could you explain the shift in BlackBerry’s channel operations from carrier/service provider to ISVs? Carriers and service providers continue to be an important growth market for BlackBerry. If we go back five-six years, there was a close relationship between a BlackBerry handset and the secure mobility of an email. As we moved ahead with our enterprise security software, we decoupled that relationship from the

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AS WE LEVERAGE OUR OVER 30 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN SECURE MOBILE APPLICATION DELIVERY,WE ARE TRULY FINDING THE MARKET MOVING TOWARDS US

handset to the software cloud. Our secure cloud application which was the first email is now virtually available on any application.

Now we de-coupled that from BlackBerry devices and made it available on all operating systems and IoT devices. As we made that transition, the solution provider for systems integrators (SIs) and ISVs becomes very important, as SIs are providing that application integration, application delivery and workflow solution to customers.

BlackBerry Secure platform allows for open APIs and SDKs, so those partners can offer significant value and manage all devices as a part of that solution in a secure fashion, integrating it into back-end solutions that are cloud-based.

Please share some of the key customer’s count and name of your solution? How are you leveraging BlackBerry’s partner strength towards this end?

From a global perspective, we have a little over 1,800 partners; 275 of these are in APAC and 56 in India, out of which eight have reached Gold status. Our partners have access to our platform and are provided the skills and competencies to create a differentiation in the market.

This marketplace is moving from device management to secure delivery of applications and files and the opportunity to operate in a unique environment. The opportunities for our partners are increasing in terms of the services, the consulting and the applications integrations capabilities- so we’re seeing pretty robust capabilities for our partners.

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CXO Speak

ARUBA’S VISION: A NETWORK THAT IS AUTOMATED AND END-TO-END Aruba has adopted a strategy of making acquisitions and investing in R&D to realise this vision.

Alain Carpentier, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Aruba shares more information

By Abhishek Raval What kind of a network does Aruba want to build for the customers?

We are investing a lot in the network management space to simplify the life of the enterprise and the end users.

Another area of importance is building an analytics layer in the backbone of the system, which does the critical proactive analytics work; for example, the retail players are asking us to have solutions that will not only run their network and provide Wi-Fi, but also generate business. The analytics layer in such scenarios becomes critical business generator for physical stores, by understanding the customer behaviour.

We have large universities in the US and Europe as our customers. The GenY is highly demanding, which requires a an easy-to-use but robust network connection. A major airport in India runs on Aruba network. The security cameras, combined with the high availability of the Wi-Fi and the retail stores inside the airport, require a strong network. The manufacturing floors are becoming increasingly digital. We have many customers in that space too. Including one of the world’s largest EV company.

Healthcare is another strong area for us. The objective is to empower the workforce to provide better patient

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THERE ARE MANY VILLAGES IN NORTH INDIA, WHERE ARUBA IS ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN TECHNOLOGY IMPLEMENTATIONS care. Apart from acquiring companies, we also have an organic development strategy. The network we are trying to build has three different domains.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is the first domain, which has a mix of domains involved. The network management piece is managed by the cloud element of the network. It provides the required depth of network visibility. Analytics is also provided to understand the network behaviour.

‘Central’ is a solution that helps organisations with large number of branches. AirWave network management helps to get a granular insight inside the network with a major thrust on networks with a large base of mobile devices and apps.

Which companies have you acquired to supplement your offerings?

We have acquired Rasa Networks.

It’s a Machine Learning startup, but

more on the network management side.

The company enables companies with huge networks to understand the network behaviour. It learns the network usage and pattern over a period of time. Customers can accordingly take proactive decision to provision resources.

Our acquisitions, apart from allowing the customers to take proactive decisions, will also make the networks more autonomous and a step ahead towards auto repairing, during any breakdowns.

Niara, the ML based security startup, was acquired to bring a robust security layer to the solution.

According to the latest Gartner networking critical capabilities report, Cisco has been beaten by Aruba in all the six areas.

What’s your viewpoint on how Aruba was able to overtake Cisco ?

There are two parts of the report – Gartner vision and the customer market vision – these reports are prepared on the basis of market sourced feedback.

Aruba has been upgraded in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant subsequent to the merger with HPE. In the past, we have been close to Cisco, but for the first time, Aruba has overtaken Cisco. It is linked to the work

Aruba

done in the last year. The company has merged the wired, wireless portfolios alongwith the ML and security capabilities of an acquired company, viz Niara. Thus Gartner appreciated the entire solution portfolio that emerged out of this integration.

The vision is to make the solution in line with the expectations of how the customer wants it to be; to be on the same page with the customer on transforming the workplace based on the branch environment in the digital world. This can be achieved by making it easy to manage the wired, wireless, management platform and security. The six capabilities revolve around these areas. Aruba’s constant focus is to bring innovation in these aspects by the R&D efforts.

While Aruba may not be in the top in terms of market share, Gartner has acknowledged our vision on how the customer is thinking about the future of networking solutions and that we are investing in the right areas.

What is the importance of behaviour analytics-based attack detection; how does it differ from a traditional enterprise security system?

Enterprise mobility solutions have triggered the requirement of borderless networks. Aruba helps companies to transform the workplace in this environment. It applies to an office, a manufacturing place, a retail store, etc.

Historically, in the absence of mobility solutions, when the risk to the network was from outside; with the proliferation of mobility devices, the risk now is also from inside the network – with the possibility of malicious devices or users entering the network premise.

Aruba provides tools to prevent or neutralise these risks which may emanate from inside. It is difficult to manually detect the risks from the swamp of mobility and IoT devices on the network. Aruba acquired Niara, the California based ML and AI based security company and integrated the features into the solution. The behaviour based analytics capabilities added to the solution makes the borderless network of companies more

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OUR PLAN IS TO INVITE PARTNERS TO DEVELOP PLATFORM AS A SERVICE FOR EDGE NETWORKING FOR OUR SOLUTION

secure and allow them to extend the digital footprint and also further expand into acquiring more IoT based solutions. Moreover, the ML based security features from Niara also make the solution to work on any network. For that matter, it works seamlessly on the Cisco platform too.

This, combined with our Network Access Control (NAC) solution, ClearPass, firmly sets the enterprise to operate on an end-to-end network infrastructure with mobile first environment. ClearPass provides a policy formulation platform, available for IoT devices too.

The solution fits well into a smart city setup where the size and scale of technology adoption and as a direct corollary, the risks are huge. Especially in a highly IoT based environment.

Which cities in India is Aruba working with?

We are in the final stages of installation for Mumbai, comprising of thousands of access points. There are many villages in North India, where we are actively involved in technology

implementations.

What’s your channel partner strategy and how do you plan to engage with them?

Our plan is to invite partners to develop platform as a service for edge networking for our solution. The customers with many branches and a huge number of franchisees would not like to have an IT person for every entity. Partners can design an as-aservice model with specific SLAs and features with a pay-per-use model. We see a huge demand for such services.

We are open to help the partners to build such platforms. We would like the partners to take this up rather doing native investments.

HPE and Aruba’s partner programme has been merged to help the partners provide components to our customers in the areas of security, management, mobility and wireless.

We are also having bigger SIs like Wipro, TCS, HCL work with us including intermediate SIs and also regional distributors to reach out to the huge SMB businesses in India.

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CXO Speak

‘EVERY YEAR WE HAVE A TARGET OF GOING TO NEWER CITIES’ Having a target to enter into five new cities every year, NetGear is bullish on the growth potential of the India market. In an interaction with CRN, Marthesh Nagendra E S, Country Manager – India & SAARC, NetGear, speaks about the company’s focus, growth areas and strategies

By Rachana Jha How do you see Netgear moving, in terms of the market, technology, environment and, innovations?

We have three product divisions – CHP, SMB and service provider business. Predominantly in CHP we have Wi-Fi routers, range extenders and Wi-Fi systems. In CHP, apart from providing good Wi-Fi coverage to homes, we are also focusing on providing smart parental controls, lag free gaming and in-depth security system against hacking, phishing, malware and related things. We are coming up with routers which can provide in-depth security to all the mobile devices or connected devices at the residence. The second is a new product portfolio where we have strong product line across four verticals. One is switching; wherein we are slowly seeing a lot of demand in the POE switch series, because state governments have made a mandate to deploy security cameras in all commercial establishments. This is the reason for the increase in demand for surveillance camera; you require POE switches to power up those cameras, so that is very important. Now with so many features coming up in surveillance camera such as video analytics, wide monitoring, the power budget will be very high and the POE switch that is required to power up

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NETGEAR HAS OVER 40 PEOPLE WORKING ACROSS INDIA, AND IN EVERY CITY, THE COMPANY IS CLOSELY WORKING WITH MORE THAN 50 SOLUTION PARTNERS those cameras has to be high-end. The second vertical where we’re seeing tremendous amount of growth is on 10gig switches and with increasing number of startups and media companies – even though there are 10 users in the environment – they would be requiring high bandwidth switches. this is something which is picking up tremendously in India.

The third part we are extensively focusing on is remote management. For example, earlier the customer used to pay ` 25,000 for the equipment and ` 25,000 for installation and maintenance; this is changing now as the customer is not blindly paying ` 50,000, instead they are paying ` 50,000 on products.

Instead of splitting into products and service, customers are investing heavily on the product, so that they can manage the products themselves.

Another aspect is storage. Certainly now the cloud is becoming cheaper and

the good thing is we have a wide range of network that adds storage. Now people are looking for reliable and affordable solution to be deployed in their physical space rather than deploying expensive storage solutions.

That’s how we are capitalising into the market and were able to grow pretty well in the storage market.

Customers, especially the SMBs, are putting their 100 per cent data on cloud; they are also deploying physical storage infrastructure at their premises in order to replicate the data between their physical location and to the cloud.

Besides almost every quarter, we end up deploying solutions in at least two or three big universities. Industry automation is picking up very well as well. In our service provider division, we have LTE modems and LTE routers.

The major segment where we are seeing highest growth in revenues is smart home security cameras. We have our own brand called Arlo, under which we already have home security cameras and lights.

How are you bringing the channel piece in it?

We have over 40 people working across India, and in every city we are closely working with more than 50 solution partners. Whereas, twice in a year we conduct training programmes in

NetGear

every city. We have a demo centre in Bengaluru, and have demo products in almost every city. Additionally, we participate in events. We are in regular touch with solution partners, so we have community centres on the website. We actively engage with the pre-sales teams in every city with each and every solution partner. Our service is strong; we are one of very few companies to offer lifetime warranty for switches and lifetime replacement. Our products are stable and we are growing aggressively.

What unique value proposition do you offer to your partners?

Stickiness is very important because we never intend to do one-time sale; it has to be a recurring business. We have been working in almost every region to build the partner community. We offer a multi-brand environment. In case of a problem, if you can resolve the problem in a short period of time, then the confidence with the solution partner will automatically increase. It is crucial to have the controlled price list circulation. If we don’t protect partner margin, definitely they will not do business because we are not lowest in the market; there is always some other player who will be selling lower than you. Most of the time, our existing customer has always referred us to other customers – 40 per cent of our storage business happens through referrals. Storage is a specialised job and the turnover will be one-tenth of the switching partner, but the margins and profitability will be more than the switching business, so obviously you cannot distribute those products in retail outlets and you cannot sell like a keyboard and mouse, it has to be controlled distribution.

How do you handhold partners amidst new market opportunities and customer requirements?

We have the product launch gate wherein we give it to select solution partners. We give it for demos and we do PR activities based on that. Before the launch we have adequate stocks of that particular product in all locations.

We give launch-specific schemes in order to increase sales, and we ensure

How has the channel business transitioned?

Over the years, the channel business has been changing. The digital media is also picking up pretty well. India is a growing market and internet penetration is very low. In the next 10 years, there will be no problem in India, the demand will go up, thereby growing the GDP.

“

IN 2018,WE INTEND TO BECOME AGGRESSIVE IN CITIES LIKE TRICHYAND HUBLI IN SOUTHERN PART OF INDIA

due care in launching any product in India. Apart from that, we provide training sessions, address partner concerns and increase customer experience. These steps are working well for us.

In terms of training, have you come up with a curriculum or academy for periodical upscaling of partners?

We have two kinds of training: NetGear Sales Certification Programme, a one-day training programme wherein the sales executives learn the basic features of our SMB products. Whereas, the second set of training is NetGear Pre-sales Certification, a three-day programme where people attend from all parts of India at our Bengaluru office.

After the training, they have to go through an exam and once they clear that, they get a certificate which is valid for a year. The certificate has to be upgraded, because the technology changes rapidly.

Any plans for channel expansion and product additions?

Slowly every year we have a target of going to newer cities. Right now we are active in close to about 14 to 15 cities, so we plan to take our business to the next five cities. Growth can happen through geography and by increasing product line. So we are planning to make the launches very successful. In 2018, we intend to become aggressive in cities like Trichy and Hubli in southern part of India. We are also planning to invest more in Vijaywada. Rajkot is picking up really well. We’re seeing almost double business year-on-year in Nagpur, so we’re planning to add more resources over there.

What would be your key thrust area for this year?

Everything is equally important.

We’re very strong in the premium segment. We give parental controls, security and lag free gaming experience; so, that market has to grow because the internet is growing.

In the surveillance market, definitely more and more commercial establishments are coming up which require security, safety and with state government mandating it, the POE business will increase. Data is getting doubled year-on-year, the storage has to grow up and business wireless is something which we are bidding very high because our research centre for business wireless is in Bengaluru, so we have close to over 100 engineers working for business wireless in the city. Especially in the niche segment, smart security cameras are picking up, so we try to capitalise on that. We have dedicated teams to try the business in different verticals.

COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JUNE, 2018 I crn.in I 35

News Analysis

MILESTONE SYSTEMS IS PREPARED FOR THE NEXT PHASE OF IP VIDEO SURVEILLANCE The electronic security and surveillance market in India is growing significantly. The Mumbai attack in 2008 and Parliament attack in Delhi are some incidents which compelled us to consider deployment of surveillance system necessary. Whether it is public or private sector, security concern is rising constantly. There are many players in the market who play a major role in the surveillance space. Milestone Systems is one of them who started operations in India in 2006 and came a long way since then in the video surveillance market

By Rachana Jha

W

hen surveillance cameras first came in the market, their job was to simply provide an extra pair of eyes. But, Milestone Systems has harnessed their processing power as well, giving both a brain and a memory for retention. "It was only a few short years ago when cynics wondered whether this emerging IP Video Technology would gain any traction, let alone take over the whole Indian video surveillance market. Unlike previous analogue systems that were passive, it quickly becomes evident that intelligent network video can amplify security beyond what a human can achieve without this new technology. Today, Milestone is compatible with over 7,000 models of IP cameras. In terms of scalability, you can find systems with more than 10,000 intelligent network video cameras integrated into a single surveillance system with some systems exceeding more than 100,000 cameras," says Amit Sarkar, Country Manager, Milestone Systems.

Milestone Systems is prepared for the

36 I COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JUNE, 2018 I crn.in

next phase of IP Video Surveillance by utilising sloud storage and services."This is a relatively new phenomenon, when only recently cloud services were rarely discussed alongside physical security. Today, in the context of convergence, IT security and physical security are now more commonly mentioned together," he says.

Data protection and cyber security strategy Cyber security and data protection is one important aspect when we talk about surveillance. It is important to partner with a company you can trust with your network and that understands the potential cyber risk imposed by unqualified / unknowing system integrators. "I have witnessed many examples of customers blindly adding 'boxes' to their network without asking what measures/qualifications the integrator has taken to mitigate any potential risk. Simple things like leaving the USB port open or default passwords left unchanged that allow for potential access by to the 'box' or corporate

network by unauthorised parties is considered unacceptable by any standard; yet it happens. Adopting a standard-based approach with technologies such as data encryption, firewalls, dual authentication, network segregation, HTTPs, VPNs and GDPR compliance are just some of the methodologies that we discuss during training / design phase, depending on customer expectation and requirements with respect to IT security, cloud based or not," mentions Sarkar.

Contribution to Smart City Mission In light of recent events, there is a growing need for people to feel secure – whether at work or out shopping, on public transport or in a critical infrastructure facility. Video systems help boost security, prevent crime, and control traffic for visitors and more than 3100,000 residents of Kolkata. “If we talk about the Milestone Smart City initiative in India, it would be incomplete without the Kolkata Project. Along with our channel partners, we have deployed the most

Milestone Systems

advanced and comprehensive video management technology solution. It provides a nerve centre to the city administration and police department.

The escalation matrix of the command and control centre can be programmed to detect traffic violations, unattended baggage, or automatic number plate recognition. The pan–tilt–zoom cameras provide massive range, and vehicle mounted cameras provide wider access. The system can also be set to provide an automatic email or mobile alert if a threat is detected. We provided the surveillance to the entire metro city. Kolkata is not alone in its effort to use technology to be a smarter city. The smart city industry is expected to be worth US$1.5 trillion by 2020. The key areas of a smart city, as defined by the Smart Cities Council, are: buildings, energy, telecommunications, payments, transportation, human services, infrastructure (including water and waste water management), and public safety. Frost & Sullivan considers eight similar areas – excluding payments and public safety, but adding governance and healthcare. On the back of this success in Kolkata, the system is estimated to double this year with other cities using this success as a template and soon to follow this example," explains Sarkar.

Channel partners – key to success Milestone is well grounded in the market with its open platform business model and community of camera and software partners across India. The company has over 280 partners on board and is looking to increase the count in 2018. "Our channel management structure ensures channel readiness, local demand generation and focuses on revenue generation and follows the industry best practice.

Together with our partners, we will be exploring new regions, zones and verticals. We already have a strong customer base in IT/ITeS, enterprise, oil, retail and government sectors and we will now be focused on targeting smart cities and airports as well. We have already started working on the roadmap and have secured three-city surveillance deals/projects," he adds.

High-level expertise From the beginning, Milestone has been guiding, supporting and training its partners through structured training and certification module. The aim is to get started quickly, work professionally and generate joint business results – creating a win-win situation for both.

"We strongly believe that the high-level expertise is best managed by those with appropriate specialisation and focus – our business partners. We train our business partners and make sure that we are able provide 24*7 support for Premium Care and Diamond partners and customers. We work closely with our partners to understand the commercial needs of different markets and industries. We focus on being in sync with the demands of our customers through partners to stay ahead in the market. Besides, we provide in-depth knowledge of VMS with the support of case studies and modules, collaborative approach with quick and practical support, common goals and joint market approach,guidance and support at all stages of a partnership to develop an annual business plan," mentions Sarkar.

Distinction point Milestone XProtect VMS is based on a true open platform, which means it has a published API, allowing developers to alter the functionality of XProtect. The Milestone open platform enables to add custom, best-in-class security solutions to surveillance, such as access control, cameras and video analytics.

Milestone products provide an ONVIF-compliant video out interface in the form of Milestone ONVIF Bridge.

This interface enables standardised and secure private-to-public video integration, and ensures full video interoperability in multi-vendor installations. Milestone ONVIF Bridge is compliant with relevant parts of ONVIF profile G and profile S, providing support for access to live video, recorded video and the ability to remotely control pantilt-zoom cameras.

Milestone provides unique support through video tutorials, manual / guides, e-learning, live chat etc. "Our strong selling point is our service. Our policy is to let the partners work on the sales and leave the service part to Milestone. We have our service centre along with dedicated resources in India. We continue to cater, support and maintenance post sales, which makes us a brand that customers/ partners loves to work with. Milestone products support more than 29 languages globally. Milestone CARE is a complete suite of operational maintenance and support services supplementing the support you receive from Milestone’s network of resellers and integrators.

Milestone Care consists of four different service packages uniquely designed to provide your business with the protection it deserves. By allowing other companies and developers to add functionality into Milestone XProtect software and providing support for the widest choice of servers and cameras, our open platform has had a radical effect on the security industry. The Milestone open platform has become the foundation for a thriving business ecosystem. Milestone products are sold through a two-tiered channel model. Our sales partners include distributors who sell Milestone products to resellers, SIs and dealers. They also provide marketing, training and sales support to help our partners give the best service to their customers. Our resellers and system integrators source additional components such as cameras and IT hardware to offer complete solutions to end customers, including design, deployment and maintenance services," adds Sarkar.

COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JUNE, 2018 I crn.in I 37

News Analysis

NetApp

DVEC TO PAVE WAY FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION NetApp has unveiled a new Data Visionary Engineering Centre (DVEC) in Bengaluru to empower Asia Pacific customers and partners to transform the world with data

T

he DVEC is available for NetaApp's partners, customers and also global system integrators. It is a tool for developing the ecosystem – customers, partners and SIs can book it. They can enhance the capabilities around cloud, flash, integration of hybrid, to somebody's onpremise infrastructure. "It will help people run the journey of on-premise to hybrid, to public cloud, to Artificial Intelligence, IoT," says Anil Valluri, President, NetApp India and SAARC. "This centre brings together the ecosystem that is required to have conversation with the right people – customers, partners etc. The propose of the DVEC is to enable our partners apart from just having discussions with our customers. The aim is to enable our partner ecosystem with the innovations that we are bringing to market, enabling them to have those conversations not just with traditional infrastructure customers, but also with newer customers and buyers who are experiencing a similar journey, going through digital transformation," says

38 I COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JUNE, 2018 I crn.in

Deepak Visweswaraiah, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, NetApp India.

Empower partners to transform data NetApp is an IP creator; partners can leverage this and develop and hone their skill sets around implementation, solutions, execution and delivery of the projects as well. Not all cases need to be addressed by NetApp; partners can do it themselves because of this the augmentation of the skill sets. "We are actually enhancing an ecosystem of partners and their skill sets. Imagine if we didn’t have the DVC, we would be just taking an expert from NetApp and doing it and not getting into the depth of it. Here, the entire team of partners get them exposed, get them repeatedly do some case studies and so on, and get expertise on some of the use cases on cloud, HCI, hybrid cloud etc," explains Valluri.

Helping partners There are various things that NetApp is looking at in terms of providing the

help that the partners need – whether it is content as for being able have written content as far as what they need to take.

Secondly in terms of the abilities to be able to size and scale the infrastructure that they would actually go offer to their customers is something that the company always had – and it offers that to partners. "Thirdly the knowledge of being able to have that level of training and enabling them with the newer technologies and what they can do with it and how they can actually address newer use cases," explains Visweswaraiah.

Besides, NetApp provides a classroom-like environment where it can expose partners to the technologies and talk about intricacies and indepth issues, implementation issues. They can also expose them to real life demos, use cases.

Significance in digital transformation DVEC also helps customers in digital transformation. "Digital transformation talks about looking at your digital assets which includes customer touch points, data that you have gathered across multiple touch points, how are you able to store it retrieve it archive it and also get insights into it. How do you do mobile first app, cloud first deployment – all of this is part of digital transformation. DVEC enables customers to embrace some of these things whether it is into analytics, AI, data mining to get new insights or purely at an infrastructure level. All of these experiences and leanings are all part of the DVECs outreach to the customers," mentions Valluri.

Shedding more light on how can DVEC can help customers in digital tranformation, Visweswaraiah says, "It is really about the growth of data and the explosion of data and how data is handled. It’s about how you manage that data, what we are looking for our customers and what customers are looking to do.”

Channel Association

FAIITA & PCAIT

BUSINESS COLLABORATION PROVING TO BE A WAY FORWARD FOR IT CHANNEL FAIITA, PCAIT organised a day-long business meet to explore business collaborations for its members

By Sandhya Michu

F

ederation of All India Information Technology Associations (FAIITA) has been actively putting efforts to revive the IT channel business of India and exploring collaborations as the way forward, which may create healthy business enhancement climate for the channel partners. In the recent past, the IT channel has been fighting against odds; and surviving at wafer-thin margins is forcing IT partners to start looking at new ways of creating business opportunities.

In line to the same background, FAIITA has organised its first-of-a-kind 'Channel Vistas' 2018 event for its members. The event was organised by Progressive Channels Association of Information Technology (PCAIT). The aim of this business meet was to discuss the business collaborations and partnership opportunities among the partners. Close to 125 IT partners from all the major states were gathered in Delhi

and decided to increase 25 per cent of business enhancement in this year.

Speaking to CRN, Alok Gupta of FAIITA says, “The Make in India and Digital India push has paved the way for several small product companies to start producing products and solutions locally, and to make these products viable across India. For this, the industry body is connecting different partners to work jointly across geographies. With GST rolled out, business collaborations have become less cumbersome for different states' partners. The first event has seen a good start and we will be increasing the scale of collaborations and work towards protecting and promoting the interest of the business community engaged in the manufacture, trade and service of information technology.”

Champakraj Gurjar, President of FAIITA, says on the occasion, “The road ahead is to take the association and its

members to work together and interact on making the full use of association members for aligning them in projects such as Make in India, Digital India and more. The association is now working in the areas of how GST can make a positive impact on the channel fraternity across the country.”

PCAIT General Secretary Saket Kapoor states, “The thinning margins in IT and cost of operation is leading the IT channel business to new challenges.

Today most of the second generation entrepreneurs are not willing to enter into IT business. If we do not explore new areas of collaborations, it will become difficult to sustain in the business.”

Gupta also highlighted that the event also recognised partners from Chandigarh and Lucknow who have set an example of this business collaborations and are charting out new business growth. During the event, nine local IT brands under the Make in India project demonstrated their products before the partners and map business networking.”

When asked how the association will target 25 per cent increase in business enhancement, Gupta shares, “Large numbers of SIs get orders for pan India installations. If we can pass on such opportunities to our networked partners, it can reduce the operation cost for SIs and add to local partners as a new business. Collaboration and cooperation will open up new avenues for partners.”

FAIITA recently signed an MoU with TAITRA and rolled back GST on multifunction printers and monitors from 28 per cent slab to eight per cent. The event was supported by leading PC brands: HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and D-Link.

COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JUNE, 2018 I crn.in I 39

Event

Smartlink

CELEBRATING 40 YEARS OF IBM MEMORIES The camaraderie of former IBM employees still lives on and is celebrated passionately among themselves due to the efforts of K R Naik, Executive Chairman, Smartlink Holdings

T

his 40-year reunion, organised

by Naik, was held at JW Marriott, Sahar, in Mumbai. The initiative was started by L H Bhatia to celebrate the 25-year reunion at Beech Caffic, Versova in the year 2003, and the tradition has been carried with exIBM employees across India getting together to take a walk down the memory lane after 30 and 35 years.

This is the fourth reunion hosted by Naik for his ex-IBM colleagues and their families.

Naik said, “It gives me great

40 I COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JUNE, 2018 I crn.in

pleasure to host the 40-year reunion.

It’s incredible that even after so many years, we share a strong bond and love for IBM. We’ve had a wonderful time reminiscing about the days that were and catching up with what everyone is currently doing.”

This year’s reunion witnessed attendance of many ex-IBMers and their families. Around 110 people attended this year's gathering. This is the fourth edition of this function.

L H Bhatia shared, “Our colleagues at IBM back then shared a very close

association with each other, which can be rarely witnessed in any other organisation. After IBM walked out of India, some of the people used to meet on every December 31; we started with a small group of about 10 people.

However, this grew slowly and we had an idea to have larger gatherings like this. Apart from our manufacturing office, we have invited our field collegues with their spouses and family. Since then we have been in connection with each other.”

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